Last Stand
by Insert New Name Here
Summary: I never understood the concept of right and wrong. After all, in a world where truly living people are scarce and the undead seem to lurk around every corner, notions of whether killing them is right or wrong are usually taken with a grain of salt. (AU, eventual Kiri/multi, rating may change to M in the future)
1. Chapter 1: Nameless

Last Stand

Chapter One: Nameless

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><p><strong>AN:**

**Okay, I know that I really shouldn't be writing new stories. I get that some of you are pissed that I've started so many new stories without continuing them.**

**This one, however, is a rare case. You see, I already have quite a few chapters ahead of this one planned out. I don't know how long it'll take me to write them out, but I have a plan laid out for this story.**

**Also, for those of you who may be interested, I've made some serious progress on SAO: Fallen Angels. It will probably be the next story I update aside from a few possible chapters on this one.**

**Oh, and in case you didn't notice, this is going to be a type of AU that I've never thought about doing before. It's pretty obvious by the title that this is a post-apocalyptic world of zombies by the summary, but there are a few things that differ from your average zombie story. I won't spoil you on what I mean just yet, since I want you to read instead of wait for me to tell you.**

**Well, I guess that's it. I'll see you at the bottom!**

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><p>I never understood the concept of right and wrong. Some have told me that I have to do what's right. But then, some people have told me that what I thought was right, well, was actually wrong. After countless people telling me that different things are right and wrong, I came to the conclusion that everyone has their own unique perception of right and wrong. Everyone always thinks they're right.<p>

So, then, why is it that I don't think that way? I've never been able to distinctly sense what's right or wrong without someone else influencing my judgment. And, due to the fact that I haven't met any living people in the past five years, I'm not even sure that I've kept a solid grip on my sanity.

For me, there is only one thing to cling onto in my life. Survival. After killing so many of them, surviving so many situations that no one else could, the only thing I thought about from day to day was how to survive. I took things one day at a time, not thinking any further ahead than I needed to in order to live to see another day.

I guess one reason I don't have a sense of right and wrong is probably because of the countless times I've been forced to slaughter someone else in order to preserve my own life. In the span of five or so years without any people to stand by me, I've become completely desensitized to killing them.

After all, in a world where truly living people are scarce and the undead seem to lurk around every corner, notions of whether killing them is right or wrong are usually taken with a grain of salt.

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><p>The all too familiar stillness of another empty house. The stale smell of air trapped far too long without circulating through any kind of working ventilation system. I timidly stepped across the foyer, nearly stumbling over debris left behind from someone's hurried exit.<p>

The neighborhood I was currently in had been nice once, but now it couldn't be distinguished from any other abandoned town or village. My footsteps broke the silence, and the beam of the flashlight in my left hand cut through the dim lighting of the interior of what had once been someone's home. There was no way to tell how long it had been empty, but the layer of dust clinging to every surface gave me a bit of comfort. I probably wouldn't run into anyone here.

_Good. Still, I have to be careful._

The kitchen would be the first place I explored; the loud grumbling of my stomach would most likely make my presence known to the whole house if not quelled. It reminded me that I hadn't had a full meal in ages. Probably since I came across that mansion three months ago. After I left, I had been surviving solely on what I could find in houses like this one. Usually, that wasn't much.

I moved through the house and cautiously entered the kitchen. I could never be too careful; being loud and stupid would surely get me killed. Still, I couldn't stop myself from letting my guard down a bit when I found a pantry full of canned goods.

All that stood between me and tons of food was a can opener. I couldn't care less about what was actually _in_ any of the cans; as long as it wasn't spoiled or rotten, it would be like heaven to my stomach.

_Me: one, house: zero!_

I thought this as I pried open the lid of one of the cans with my butterfly knife, revealing canned oranges. It didn't take long before the whole can had been emptied, along with two others.

My hunger satiated, I decided to look around the rest of the house. After all, I had to make sure it was empty if I wished to stay there for the night.

The stairs creaked as I climbed them, kicking all my senses, sharpened by my primal need to survive, into overdrive. I held that same butterfly knife in my right hand, but also carried a longer, full-tang knife in my left, one that I normally kept sheathed at my left side.

I couldn't help but notice the photos lining the staircase. A family had lived here. The photos all depicted two rather tall parents, and two kids, one a boy and one a girl. The boy looked kind of like me, or at least he would if I ever got a bath. My ebony hair was oily and matted; there were always more pressing needs than that of any kind of hygiene other than keeping my teeth in proper shape for eating.

The boy looked to be about fourteen, same as me. Of course, that means that if he were still alive, he would be older than me. I was nine when the Event happened, and there was no telling when these pictures were actually taken.

Sadly, I couldn't really be sure of my own age at that point. After the Event, it became incredibly hard to tell time, from the time of day to even when a year had passed. The only way I would know my approximate age was by the season; I knew I was born in the late summer, so when I could tell that fall was approaching, I would just add another year to my life. Ages and birthdays were really just trivial concerns in the grand scheme of things, though. If you're alive, you're alive. It doesn't really matter how old you are, just as long as you can effectively fend for yourself and survive.

I made quick work of my search of the upstairs. The parents' bedroom, the shared bedroom of the children, and a restroom. Only one door remained, and it could be for any purpose. My heart sped up slightly at the possibilities of what the room could contain.

An inaudible sigh escaped my lips as I soundlessly opened the door. It was only a nursery. Apparently, the family had been expecting a new addition before the Event.

As I stood at the entrance to the nursery, I closed my eyes and tried to remember what it was like to be little, to still believe that there was nothing out there that my parents couldn't handle.

It was because of my calm state that I heard a creaking sound from the nursery's closet door. My eyes flew open and I poised myself to attack as something slowly pushed its way out of the closet.

It was the boy from the photos. He must have been hiding in the closet in a vain attempt to escape the thing that started the Event. He must have been here the whole time, wasting away in wait for someone like me to come by. He shared the same trait that all of the undead did: a shining set of golden eyes. The rest of his body looked like it had been rotting for years, which it probably had.

In a flash, I put my butterfly knife in my pocket and reached for the weapon hidden under my black jacket. My common sense stopped me just before I grasped its handle; the noise it made would undoubtedly attract more of my opponent's kind.

One swift slash through his neck and spinal cord from the knife in my left hand was all it took to end it. His head fell to the floor and rolled off to the side, the shimmering golden color fading from its eyes before both the body and the head dissipated into mere dust.

Even the blood on my knife turned to dust. I turned it so that the edge faced the ground, watching as the dust fell and dispersed into a small cloud upon contact with the wooden flooring.

Letting out a nervous breath I hadn't even realized I was holding, I sheathed my knife and turned back to the hallway. Family wasn't for me; I was a survivor. I didn't have the luxury of having a mom or a dad. Still, as I shut the nursery door, I couldn't help but wonder what I would be doing in a different world.

Before I went downstairs once more, I went back to the parents' bedroom. I took the blankets off of the queen-sized bed, lumping them together and carrying them down the stairs. I walked through the house and into the living room, where I had left the backpack that contained my provisions right by the couch.

Once I had spread the sheets out on the large couch, I grabbed my backpack, unzipping the ratty black thing and pulling out a thick paperback book I found in the mansion. The cover depicted a man smiling down at a much shorter woman, and the title tried to set it up as a sappy romance novel.

Since beginning to read it, I had found the book to be anything but. It captured the ups and downs of real life— or, at least, what real life used to be like before the Event. In other words, the rather long novel was essentially a window through which I could escape into the world as it once was, into the times when I didn't have to fear for my life every day.

Finding this book was a godsend fortune for me. It helped me regain some of my ever-dwindling memories of the way things were. It helped me hold onto my humanity… for the time being.

And so, I began to read. Unfortunately, not ten pages later, I heard a shrill sound coming from the streets outside this small house I was using to take refuge for a single night.

_That sound… what is it?_

And again. This time, the sound seemed closer. I set my book down on the couch, then slowly stood up, walking through the house until I reached the bay window in the front. Making sure to stay away from the moonlight that illuminated much of the flooring, I looked through the wall of glass to find…

_Is that… another human?_

A humanoid figure stood in the middle of the street, standing in a posture that the undead very rarely took. From where I was, I couldn't make out much of its appearance, and I couldn't even discern its gender. However, one thing stood out to me. Somehow, even from tens of yards away, in the dead of night, the one thing I could see was…

_Those eyes… they're blue. Whoever it is… isn't one of them._

That thought alone sent a surge of an emotion I couldn't recognize through my entire body. I almost acted on it, almost went outside to meet this living person. But then, I saw it. Or, more appropriately, _them_.

Three undead were slowly moving towards the figure. They wanted to contaminate it, to make it one of them.

_Why aren't you running?!_

I screamed this in my mind, even though I knew that my thoughts wouldn't reach the figure. I soon recognized its posture, and what I realized filled me with dread. Whoever it was seemed to be paralyzed with fear.

Every muscle in my body screamed at me to help this person, the only living human I had encountered for five years. At the same time, my mind tried desperately to keep my impulse at bay. I knew it would most likely lead to both of our deaths if I just charged out there recklessly.

I needed to come up with a plan before running out there, but I knew I didn't have the time. It all came down to a battle between my instincts to survive… and my heart, which was begging my mind to make me rescue her. And, in the end…

My heart somehow won.

Without another thought, I lunged forward, activating the one trick I possessed.

There was no sound of shattering glass as I passed through the window and into the street. No, my trick made sure of that. I moved through the window as if it wasn't even there. That was my trick, one that had saved me from countless situations where I should never have survived.

The Phantom Shift.

Or, at least, that's what I dubbed it. The terminology made little difference to me, just so long as it worked.

Now that I was out in the open, I could see much more than a mere three undead. I counted ten sets of shimmering golden eyes, all drawn to a new target— me, that is.

Without looking behind me, in a calm, even tone, I said, "Get back. I can handle this on my own."

"But—" the figure, now identified as a female from her voice, tried to say something before I cut her off.

"No buts," I said, pulling the butterfly knife from my pocket with my right hand and unsheathing the long knife from my its scabbard on my left side with my other hand. I flicked open my butterfly knife in a flash, already determining which one I should kill first.

I decided to go with the one near the front, moving at the fastest pace; the slower ones didn't matter much until they got very close, but the faster ones were much more dangerous. Thus, I decided to focus on killing the most threatening before the others.

Without a moment's delay, I lunged towards the fastest one, falling to the ground and somersaulting to close the distance. As I rolled past its left side, I stuck my long knife out, cutting through its knees.

As I rolled up to my feet, I dragged the same knife up through my adversary's back, then turned around and severed its spinal cord at the neck with my butterfly knife. The undead fell to the ground, turning into dust soon after.

I didn't wait for it to fully decompose, instead opting to target the one to my left. I took one swing at its neck with my long knife, cutting clean through its entire neck and making its head fly.

I sensed one coming from behind me. I reacted accordingly, spinning to my left and cutting through the middle of its face, right at the jawline. I still hit a part of the spinal cord, damaging it enough so that the undead began to turn to dust soon after.

The next few seconds went by in a blur. All I remember was the constant sound of knife tearing through rotten flesh. When I came back to my senses, I found myself standing in the middle of a giant cloud of dust composed of the remains of the undead I had slaughtered.

I swung at the dust around me once with each of my knives, the tiny breeze created from them dispersing the cloud and making the whole area much clearer. For a second or two, I looked up at the sky, gazing longingly at the full moon that illuminated the streets with its soft glow.

I turned to the girl I saved, finding that, even up close, the only thing I could make out was the pair of deep blue eyes that I saw from within the house I had appropriated. The whole rest of her body was nothing more than a silhouette to my eyes.

Even with this strange abnormality in my vision, I knew I still had to speak to her. "Hey, are you okay?" I asked her, giving what I hoped to be a caring look. Going without people around for five years made it troublesome to remember what facial expressions went with what emotions.

"Yes, I'm fine," she said in a timid voice. "But what about you? You didn't get hurt by them, did you?"

I sheathed my long knife and pocketed my butterfly knife, shaking my head to try to reassure her. "I'm just fine," I replied, giving her a thumbs-up with my right hand. "Anyway, what's your name?

"Yoruko," the blue-eyed girl told me. "And yours?"

I paused. _What… what _is_ my name?_ I thought, frowning slightly as I tried to remember.

Yoruko must have taken my silence and frown the wrong way, for her next words were, "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

"That's not it," I quickly responded, my voice slightly raised. "It's just… I don't have a name. Or, at least, not one worth remembering. And I should know… because I don't remember it myself."

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><p><strong>AN:**

**Well, what do you think? I think it's pretty different from the average zombie fic so far. Then again, I've never read a zombie story, nor have I actually played a video game of the genre.**

**Regardless, I had a freaking blast writing this. I just hope you guys had as much fun reading it as I did writing it.**

**You know, I really would put a disclaimer here, but I've recently come to realize that there is no actual need to put one here. It's mostly just a word count boosting paragraph or sentence. So yeah, I won't be doing those anymore.**

**See you later!**


	2. Chapter 2: Cerulean

Last Stand

Chapter Two: Cerulean

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><p><strong>AN:**

**This is literally the fastest update I've made to a story in months. I'm not sure how long this streak will continue for, but know this: I've finally come up with a complete outline for this story. I'm still fleshing out some of the final details, but I've got a set plotline that I want to follow. Thus, I should be able to continue to update this story more and more often than my others.**

**Well, I guess I'll let you read now. See you below!**

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><p><em>I turned to the girl I saved, finding that, even up close, the only thing I could make out was the pair of deep blue eyes that I saw from within the house I had appropriated. The whole rest of her body was nothing more than a silhouette to my eyes.<em>

_Even with this strange abnormality in my vision, I knew I still had to speak to her. "Hey, are you okay?" I asked her, giving what I hoped to be a caring look. Going without people around for five years made it troublesome to remember what facial expressions went with what emotions._

_"Yes, I'm fine," she said in a timid voice. "But what about you? You didn't get hurt by them, did you?"_

_I sheathed my long knife and pocketed my butterfly knife, shaking my head to try to reassure her. "I'm just fine," I replied, giving her a thumbs-up with my right hand. "Anyway, what's your name?_

_"Yoruko," the blue-eyed girl told me. "And yours?"_

_I paused._ What… what is my name? _I thought, frowning slightly as I tried to remember._

_Yoruko must have taken my silence and frown the wrong way, for her next words were, "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."_

_"That's not it," I quickly responded, my voice slightly raised. "It's just… I don't have a name. Or, at least, not one worth remembering. And I should know… because I don't remember it myself."_

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><p>"You don't remember your own name?" this girl calling herself Yoruko asked me, her eyes widened.<p>

"To be honest, I don't really remember much of anything that happened before the Event," I explained, casting my gaze to the ground. "I don't remember any of the people I used to know, or even where I lived. The earliest complete memory I have is of about five years ago, right after the Event."

I looked back at Yoruko. Or, more specifically, her fascinating indigo eyes. The only eyes I had seen for five years were my own steel-gray and the shining golden eyes of the undead. "I guess it's the price for living on."

"It must be hard for you," she whispered sadly. "Not remembering anything."

"To not remember my life before the Event is to not long for what's gone forever," I replied, shaking my head with a soft smile. I surveyed the area around us, looking for any signs of more undead. Even when I found none, I still kept up my guard.

I grabbed Yoruko's right hand with my left, earning a barely audible squeak of surprise. "It's not safe to be out in the open like this," I explained, beginning to lead her back towards my one-night base. "I set up a temporary place to sleep in this house, but I'm leaving in the morning."

"Where will you go?"

This question caught me off guard. I regained my composure just in time to respond. "Wherever I see fit to stay for a night or two. It could be a house in the next town over, it could be in a completely different region of the world. Either way, I can't stay in one place for more than a day."

"Why is that?" she queried as I opened the door to my temporary base. Once we were both inside and the door was shut and locked, I led her over to my couch.

"Because humans have a distinctly different scent that only the undead can pick up on," I explained, looking back to her indigo eyes. "After a day or two, the scent becomes strong enough for just about every one of them in the whole town to smell. And you already know what they would do with that info."

After that, the night was mostly spent in silence. Out of courtesy, I let Yoruko sleep on the couch-bed that I had prepared for myself, then sat down and leaned back against one of the armrests. It wasn't safe to sleep at this point; I had no idea how long she had been here, so she could attract undead to our temporary base. On top of that, with two humans in the same place, the smell they could track would most likely intensify greatly. This girl didn't seem to be able to fight, which meant I had to be on watch the entire night.

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><p>When the sun started peeking over the horizon, I knew it was time for me to leave. I got up from my spot beside the couch, grabbing my backpack and heading for the kitchen. I planned to get some more canned food from the pantry, and then leave while it was light out. The undead didn't move about as much in the light, and when they did, they were slower. As a tradeoff, the human smell that they tracked became stronger during the day, meaning they would know exactly where to go once night fell.<p>

After stocking up with about two days' worth of canned food, I returned to the living room, finding Yoruko still sleeping peacefully. After looking at the gray silhouette of her body, the only thing I could see of her, I began to have second thoughts.

_Can I really just leave her here?_

My rational mind couldn't even fathom where that thought came from. I couldn't take her with me; her lack of combat skills would either get her killed or get both of us killed. She was nothing but a liability, through and through.

_But… she's a human, like me…_

And yet again, a stray thought confused me even more. I had no need for social interaction. I had survived on my own for five years, and I could continue to survive just fine without her.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard a strange noise coming from the front door. It sounded nothing like what an undead would sound like if it threw itself onto the door. Quite puzzled, I slowly walked through the house until I reached the door, my left hand grasping the knife at my side just in case something went wrong.

As I neared the door, the noise repeated itself. Three soft pounding sounds in quick succession before stopping altogether. Somehow, the noise reminded me of something, but the memory loomed just past my mind's grasp.

I looked through the tiny glass window, just large enough to see through with one eye, in the middle of the front door. The sight that greeted me…

Another silhouette, about the same height as Yoruko. Its outline had a distinctly different shape, but the real difference… was the set of bright, almost greenish blue eyes that seemed to glow, even with the rising sun right behind them.

_Another human… _I thought, looking intently at the set of eyes that seemed to shimmer, almost like the shimmer of the eyes of the undead. _But… something is different about this one._

"Yoruko!" the cerulean-eyed figure said, the voice identifying it as another female. She moved her right hand up to the door, making contact in a way that matched the sound I had heard earlier.

_Wait… she said, 'Yoruko.' Then… they must know each other. I could just leave her with this one and be on my way._

I unlocked the door, making sure that the figure heard it before activating my Phantom Shift and walking through the wall to my right. I ended up in a room that I had seen when I first arrived— a laundry room, by the looks of it.

The door I unlocked opened a moment later. Immediately after, the sound of rushing footsteps rang throughout the house as the figure sprang through the entrance.

"Who's there?" I heard the new girl nearly shout out as she reached the end of the foyer. The volume almost made me unsheathe my knife and go on the attack, but I kept myself calm enough to stick to the plan.

_She won't find me…_ I reasoned with myself, trying to calm my frantically beating heart. _Just stay still, don't make a sound, and she won't find me._

The sound of the cerulean-eyed girl's footsteps drifted towards the living room, where I had left Yoruko sleeping. Even so, I stayed completely still, knowing that I would need to wait until they left to leave myself.

It took several minutes before I heard the sound of two sets of footsteps coming for the front door. With them came two voices, one belonging to Yoruko, and one to the cerulean-eyed girl.

"Why did you run off this time?" the new girl asked my indigo-eyed acquaintance in a tired tone.

"I sensed another living human with a Gift," Yoruko replied, her tone completely different from all of the ones she had used with me. "So I went to find them. I met another human, but I didn't see him use any power. Either his Gift isn't useful in battle, or he didn't even have one, and the human I sensed is already gone."

"What is it with you and picking up stray puppies?" the other one queried gruffly. "Seriously, you're much more important to our team than any rat you find, whether they have a Gift or not."

I knew I shouldn't have been affected by her words, but something in her tone just rubbed me the wrong way. Against my better judgment, I found myself walking back through the wall and right in front of both of them.

"I'm not exactly a 'stray puppy', girlie," I said, giving the cerulean-eyed girl an annoyed glare. Her eyes widened considerably as I spoke, giving me semblance form of satisfaction. "In fact, I can guarantee you that I'm better at surviving than both of you combined."

After a few seconds of shocked silence, the cerulean eyes of my annoyance narrowed. "Oh? How do you figure, street rat?"

"Calm down, both of—"

Before Yoruko could finish, I decided to continue my little debate with this new girl. "Have you traveled alone for five years without any human contact? Have you been surrounded by more than forty undead before fighting your way out and walking away without a scratch? Have you forgotten almost everything about your life in the world before the Event?"

When she said nothing, I smirked, then turned to meet Yoruko's widened eyes. "So, you're not exactly alone, are you? Well, I guess that solves one problem of mine. Now I don't have to deal with a liability when I leave today."

The second I finished my sentence, I heard the familiar sound of a gun being loaded with a magazine. I turned back to the other silhouette, finding her pointing a handgun at my head. On instinct, I activated Phantom Shift, though I could tell that neither of them noticed.

_Good._

"Let's see how you handle a bullet in your brain, Mr. Survivalist."

"Go ahead," I replied, giving her a devious smirk. "But the only thing that it'll do is attract a bunch of undead with the sound. However…"

I grasped the handle of my sheathed knife with my left hand. "I'll make sure that they're not what kills you."

"Both of you, stop it!" Yoruko shouted, walking in between us. "This is wrong! We're all humans, so we shouldn't be trying to kill each other!"

At her words, I found myself relaxing my grip on my knife. At the same time, the other girl lowered her gun, her eyes showing that she still wanted to shot me. She seemed to obey Yoruko for some reason, even though the difference in skill between them was obvious.

I couldn't care less, however. My mind was racing due to three words in her plea.

"_This is wrong!"_

I hadn't thought about what was right or wrong in years. I had lived by my own creed. One that said to do whatever it takes to survive, and destroy anything that gets in the way. Now that I had heard the word, 'wrong', I somehow felt… empty.

_Why?_ My rational mind thought. _Why should I care about what's right or wrong? I just need to keep on living… it doesn't matter if I do something wrong in the process…_

Then, all of the sudden, the cerulean-eyed girl spoke up in an apologetic tone. Even her eyes showed genuine remorse. "Look, Yoruko's right. It's wrong to fight another human. So… I'm sorry."

In truth, I had no idea what to say. I didn't know how to handle it, especially since I was having a hard time handling my own emotions right then.

"Is it wrong?" I finally said, looking up at the ceiling. "We both intended to kill each other. For the past five years, I've never thought about what's right and what's wrong. If something like an undead intended to attack me, I always killed it without a second thought.

"Just a few seconds ago, when you had your gun pointed at me, I thought the exact same thing I do when I see an undead coming after me. 'The first move she makes against me will be her last.' That's what I thought."

I closed my eyes, beginning to talk in a slightly more emotional tone. "In the past five years, I've pretty much become an animal that only thinks about self-preservation. I don't even remember my own name.

"I guess… what I'm trying to say is…" at this point, I was struggling for words. "If I keep going down the path I've walked all this time, I think that I'll lose my humanity entirely. And, at this point, I'm not sure that I want that.

"I don't know where you guys are going after today, but… I want to come with you."

Silence reigned the foyer for several seconds. When I opened my eyes again, I saw the cerulean-eyed girl looking to Yoruko as if she were deferring to her. Finally, it seemed like they reached a verdict.

My indigo-eyed acquaintance looked to the other girl, who began speaking in a stern tone. "Someone is coming to pick us up in five minutes," she said curtly, looking me dead in the eyes. "So you'd best be ready by then."

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><p><strong>AN:**

**So, how was that? Please tell me what you think in a review! Also, sorry for being a bit picky, but please don't just say a generic compliment and then follow up with, "update soon". I know you mean well, but telling me to update right after I **_**just**_** updated can get really annoying.**

**By the way, for those of you who are wondering about this, there is a reason why Kirito can only see silhouettes with eyes, as opposed to seeing the whole body in detail. The only thing he needed to know about the human physique for five whole years was the color of the eyes. All of the undead have glowing golden eyes, so his brain decided to only focus on what he needs to in order to survive.**

**Anyway, I think that's it! I guess I'll be seeing ya!**


	3. Chapter 3: One More Makes Seven

Last Stand

Chapter Three: One More Makes Seven

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><p><strong>AN:**

**Wow, it's been a long time since I looked at this thing, or anything on this account! Seriously, the last time I published something on this account was in April, and the last time I worked on this story before today was way back in February or March!**

**So yeah, not dead and all that. This is honestly one of my only old stories that was still up to my current standard of quality, which is why I decided it deserved to be continued.**

**So, after about nine months, here's the next chapter! Most of it was done today, with the exception of the first couple hundred words after the pre-chapter flashback, which were mostly done in February or March. The vast majority of this fic is new writing, though there's still a lot of dialogue.**

**I'll let you read now.**

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><p><em>"I guess… what I'm trying to say is…" at this point, I was struggling for words. "If I keep going down the path I've walked all this time, I think that I'll lose my humanity entirely. And, at this point, I'm not sure that I want that.<em>

_"I don't know where you guys are going after today, but… I want to come with you."_

_Silence reigned the foyer for several seconds. When I opened my eyes again, I saw the cerulean-eyed girl looking to Yoruko as if she were deferring to her. Finally, it seemed like they reached a verdict._

_My indigo-eyed acquaintance looked to the other girl, who began speaking in a stern tone. "Someone is coming to pick us up in five minutes," she said curtly, looking me dead in the eyes. "So you'd best be ready by then."_

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><p>"<em>Son, go and enter the special chamber in the cellar."<em>

_I raised my head to meet the ever-stoic gaze of my father. As always, his dark gray eyes so similar to my own held no emotions to discern his intentions, but something still seemed off. Without even looking back, I found the remote and clicked the button to turn the TV off so I could give him my full attention._

"_You've been toying with that thing for months," I absentmindedly pointed out the recent focus of his research and very life. Even as I said this with a trace of bitterness in my voice, I slowly arose from my seat on our black leather couch. "Mind if I ask what it's for?"_

"_You'll see once you go inside," he replied simply. "Just make sure you seal the door properly. I'll come to get you when the test is over."_

"_Sure, but this better not take too long," came my languid words of consent as I sauntered around back of the couch and towards the stairway. "There's a new episode of my favorite anime on in twenty minutes."_

"_The world will end before I prioritize your show's new episode over my research's fruition."_

"_Well, whatever. Just make sure to record it for later, then."_

"_I suppose I have no choice."_

_Though his words satisfied me, his voice unnerved me. He sounded as if he were pressed for time, which never seemed to happen with him unless there was something big coming. And not a good 'something'._

_All the more reason to just do what he said so I avoided getting caught up in it._

* * *

><p>I woke up in a cold sweat. I couldn't remember what I had dreamed about, but I knew it was important. Something tied to my past.<p>

I was snapped out of my reverie by the sound of a motor starting. I looked around, trying to find the source and coming up with nothing. I seemed to be in a drab, gray bedroom that had recently been cleaned – I could smell the disinfectant, and its powerful, alien smell made my nose wrinkle with disgust.

The sheets covering my body were as gray as the walls, though they still provided me a suitable amount of warmth. Not enough to make me feel too hot, but easily enough to facilitate proper rest. No wonder I had slept so well.

As I sat up, something glossy and black fell right over both of my eyes. It took me a moment to register that this was my hair – my natural, clean hair. It had grown tremendously in the past several years, but I hadn't cleaned it thoroughly in months, because it stayed back out of my eyes better when matted and greasy.

But the first thing these people made me do was take a shower (their clean water source was a mystery to me), with all cleaning agents included. My hair, and the rest of my body, came out cleaner than they had been in years. When I looked at myself in a mirror after exiting the shower stall, I didn't recognize myself at all. The rough, grungy boy who had entered the shower had certainly disappeared and been replaced by someone much cleaner.

I still hadn't gotten used to my hair feathering into my vision after a whole night of dealing with it. Once again, I raised my hands to my face and tucked my long, lustrous black bangs behind my ears – a temporary measure that would come undone whenever I leaned down.

I gently removed the covers from my body and stood up. Now that I was standing, I could feel a slight pull in the direction of the doorway, indicating that the very building itself was moving over the ground in the opposite direction.

_Did this building have wheels? I don't remember it having any when I entered last night… wait! What's that noise?!_

When I put my hands to my ears, I noticed the faint sound of footsteps nearing my doorway. Years of survival instinct overwriting all of my neural pathways made me immediately hop back onto my bed and activate my Phantom Shift ability. I instantly fell through the bed and onto the floor below it as if the bed didn't exist for me to fall onto it – or as if _I _didn't exist to fall onto it.

As the sound of footsteps drew nearer, I deactivated my ability and grabbed my full-tang combat knife from its pre-positioned spot under the bed, right next to my hand. I had placed it there the night before, anticipating that I would phase through the bed on instinct if an intruder approached.

Finally, the sound of footsteps stopped, right in front of the doorway to my bedroom. However, contrary to my expectations, my door didn't ease open. Instead, I heard a voice.

"Get up in the next five minutes or you'll regret it, recruit!" a familiar female voice growled from the other side of the door. The cerulean-eyed girl from the night before. Then, more footsteps, this time going away from the door.

Once again, I found myself alone. I briefly wondered just what the hell I signed up for before deciding to get up like she said. I grabbed my knife and shifted through the bed, into a standing position next to it.

"I guess it could be worse," I muttered to myself as I began to get ready.

* * *

><p>Getting "ready" for me merely consisted of fastening my combat knife's sheath to my waist, putting my butterfly knife in my pocket, and brushing my now-annoying hair behind my ears again because it fell into my eyes while I was grabbing my sheath from under the bed. What I wouldn't have given to have my hair matted with grease again so it would stay out of my eyes.<p>

I also grabbed one of the books from my backpack for a way to pass the time, just in case.

As it turned out, I still hadn't memorized the layout of this strange building that seemed to move over the ground. I was used to moving around in near-total darkness, but this electrically-lit building removed that condition I had grown so accustomed to and made memorizing the layout effectively impossible for a single night's work.

Still, before long, I found myself in a room with comfortable furniture, where six gray silhouettes – I realized they must have been human by the natural postures – were lounging about.

Once again, the only feature I made out from every silhouette was the eyes. And not a single one of them had normal brown or black eyes. Every single person in this room had an abnormal eye color to me.

The indigo belonged to the first human girl I met in years, Yoruko. She sat languidly on the L-shaped couch's right end, eyes seemingly lost in thought.

The cerulean eyes belonged to the girl that came looking for Yoruko, whose brief, stilted introduction the other night had informed me of her name: Shino. She sat straight, right next to Yoruko, almost as if guarding her.

The remaining four were unfamiliar to me – they had introduced themselves to me the other night, but I didn't remember the majority of their names. I saw soft chestnut, bright blue, vivid green, and blood red in each of their eyes. The one with blue eyes was the only one with a male-shaped silhouette amongst the entire group. That made the gender balance extremely uneven here – five girls to two boys, including me. I shuddered at all the hormones that must have been unleashed here.

I almost turned around and left. That would've been better than having to interact with so many people. However, in the split second it took me to make the decision, it was made for me.

"Hey, look! The newbie's up with a minute to spare," a smooth, languid male voice came from the blue-eyed male silhouette, as if he were commenting on a movie scene. That notified everyone else of my presence, and then a cacophony of voices all gave their own thoughts on the matter.

"Yeah. He probably got lost – it's his first day here in the moving fortress, after all," the chestnut-eyed girl purred.

_Moving… fortress…?_

"Really, only giving him five minutes was a bit strict, don't you think, Shinocchi?" the green-eyed girl asked Shino using a very strange nickname.

"He preached about being a survivalist and annoyed me yesterday. And don't call me that, Leafa."

_You asked for it by calling me a stray puppy, missy,_ I retorted in my mind.

"But he still beat your time getting to this room from when you were prompted by a whopping forty-one seconds, even if he was lost," the red-eyed one assessed coolly. "He took four minutes and eight seconds without knowing the building's layout, but you took four minutes and forty-nine seconds, despite knowing exactly where to go."

Somehow, the red-eyed silhouette seemed in control of the entire group. Not necessarily 'in charge', but her position of relaxation, combined with a look in her ruby irises that said she saw and understood everything around her, made her slightly unnerving. She seemed to be looking down on everyone else, and they all seemed to be taking it without complaint.

_This girl gets under my skin._

"You saying he's better than me, Yuuki?" Shino gruffly responded without moving a centimeter.

_So that's her name… now I'll remember._

"At getting up and being ready for action, yes," came red-eyes' blunt reply. "But you said he was talking about survivalist skills earlier?"

"Yeah. Said he walked out of a room with over forty undead in it without taking damage, after beating them all. Obviously a lie, though."

At this, I found myself offended. "Excuse me, missy? I've done that more than once. The most undead I've ever taken out at once was closer to seventy, though. But I did get whacked in the knee once during that one. It just made all my first strikes come from below for a while."

The room went dead silent. For a moment, I wondered why they were all looking to the one with chestnut-colored eyes instead of the one who said such an outrageous statement. Then, when she looked at me from the only chair in the room, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, as if static electricity were running through every strand.

Finally, she spoke after almost thirty seconds of electric staring, and I felt the hairs on my neck settle down. "He's not lying. He's taken out three groups of over forty undead before due to terrible timing and bad luck with location choice, with one of them being exactly seventy-two. And all he used to do it were the knives he has on him now and his… Phantom Shift? What a weird name… anyway, his memories of that fight are a bit muddled in the middle, so I can't really figure out how he pulled it off."

"What the hell did you just…?" I trailed off once I remembered the feeling I got when her eyes landed on me. It felt like my neck's hair was electrically charged to the point of standing on end. I remembered reading an abandoned school textbook that said the brain is an electrical device. Did that mean…

"Bingo," she said, just as I noticed the hairs on my neck standing on end even higher. "I can read the electrical impulses in your brain by looking at you. I can read your mind, read your memories… your brain is a book for me to read."

_Oh, freaking hell._

"Creepy powers aside, the newbie has quite a bit of skill, huh?" the blue-eyed boy mused aloud. "To think he mowed down that many zombies with just a couple of knives… whew, I couldn't do that."

"You can't do anything useful, Yuji," Shino said, reaching her foot over to kick at his lounging shin. After receiving no response from him, she moved her foot back to its original opinion. "You're basically a NEET right now, remember?"

"Yeah, and doing nothing while you guys endanger yourselves is totally on the top of my priorities list," he snappily replied without missing a beat. "I'm still healing, remember? I've got, like, two broken bones right now, so I can't really concentrate enough to help you."

_What? Broken bones? But his silhouette doesn't look like it has a cast anywhere…_

"Yet you can concentrate enough to hide the fact that your leg is supposedly still broken. Right, I see where your priorities are." Surprisingly, the one to comment this was the red-eyed Yuuki, sitting about a meter behind everyone in a two-seated couch by herself.

_What the hell? His leg is broken?_

Finally, the green-eyed Leafa decided to graciously cue me in on what I had obviously missed. "Newbie-san, Yuji has the power to make people see something totally different from what's actually happening. Right now, his right leg is actually in a cast, despite what it looks like to us."

"… I see…" I was beginning to lose track of how many of these oddballs needed to be under constant watch from me. First the grating Shino, then the seemingly-superior Yuuki, then the mind-reader, then the laid-back but visually deceptive Yuji… it felt like only Yoruko and Leafa could actually be approachable. Well, maybe just Leafa, all things considered.

"Just to let you know, we've all got one weird power or another," the mind-reader said from her chair, and I felt my neck hairs stand on end again as I turned to look into her chestnut eyes. "Besides, it's not like you don't have one. Your Phantom Shift basically makes you a ghost while it's active…"

"Wait, like a ghost? How? Does he turn invisible?" Yuji queried with an excited glint in his eyes. "Think of all the awesome bathing opportunities that would present here… hey, newbie! Can you make me invisible, too?"

Thankfully, I didn't have to be the one to tell him that my power didn't do anything like that. For once, gunner girl did something beneficial to me. "No, you useless pervert!" Shino nearly shouted at Yuji. "He can walk through stuff!"

"Aw, but that's boring! Not nearly as many opportunities there… but a few still come to mind…"

"Go to hell, Yuji!"

I merely looked on at this ridiculous display, my mind elsewhere. So she must have remembered the beginning of the reckless stunt I pulled that almost made her shoot at me. Then she should have remembered that it was her own fault I irked her by talking about my survival skills – because she totally provoked me into showing myself in the first place.

_Damn, now I'm mad all over again…_

"Don't worry, newbie." And suddenly, the hairs on my neck stood on end once more. Did the mind-reader have no sense of restraint? "You'll get to take out your anger on someone for your combat assessment."

"Combat what?"

_So I'm gonna have to fight someone after all? Who to pick, who to pick… no contest. I gotta wipe that smug look of self-assumed superiority right out of her red eyes._

* * *

><p><strong>AN:**

**Yeah, there was way more dialogue than I'm really content with. I'll rectify that next chapter, I guess.**

**By the way, that "Yuji" character is not an OC. The romaji for the underworld character, Eugeo's name is "Yujio", and I used an abbreviated form of that as everyone's nickname for him.**

**Well, how do you like that? There are people with weirder powers than Kirito! For those of you wondering what everyone's powers are (and who are okay with being lightly spoiled), I'll make a list below. Four out of six have been used or hinted at already, but the last two are truly spoilers, so be warned before you read them.**

**Asuna: Mind/Memory Reading (self-explanatory)**

**Yuji (Eugeo): Visual Deception (Why Kirito saw no cast silhouette on his broken right leg)**

**Shino: Sharpshooting Eyes (combined with her precise calculations of everything around her, this boosts the effective accuracy range of any gun she uses by about 500 meters, 1500 for rifles with a scope)**

**Yoruko: Power Sensing (How she found Kirito, obviously)**

**Leafa (Suguha): Nature Manipulation (she is the sole reason they have clean food and water)**

**Yuuki: Power Manipulation (She's the boss of this group of six because she can shut everyone else's powers off completely or even change what they do, and she can do Kirito-level crowd clearing with her power by shutting off the power that keeps the "zombies" animated)**

**By the way, for those of you wondering, "where are the adults here?!", there is one around, but he hasn't made an appearance yet. He'll play a much more important role in the story than you might initially think.**

**Well, next chapter will be about Kirito's combat assessment on the moving fortress that Asuna mentioned earlier. They're all on it right now, and Kirito is about to find out just how bad of a spot he put himself in by deciding to challenge Yuuki.**

**Well, I gotta go for now. After twelve in the morning and all that jazz. I'd ask for some intelligent feedback, but I figure one or two will come my way eventually, so why bother?**

**See you all next chapter!**


	4. Chapter 4: Combat Assessment, Rematch

Last Stand

Chapter Four: Combat Assessment; Rematch

* * *

><p><strong>AN:**

**Another two weeks, another update. Let's hope I can keep this pace up!**

**So, for those of you wondering, this chapter is basically all about fighting and fighting again. It's meant to show how capable of growth Kirito is for someone who doesn't really start out as the best. I'll let you read to find out exactly what that means.**

**Man, I really need to update my profile, don't I? The last update came last year, and the second to last season is already starting! For your information, none of the information regarding stories on my profile is accurate. Absolutely none of it. Hopefully, I'll get around to mopping up that old mess soon, but it likely won't happen for a few days.**

**I'll let you guys off the hook for now. Enjoy the read! **

* * *

><p><em>I merely looked on at this ridiculous display, my mind elsewhere. So she must have remembered the beginning of the reckless stunt I pulled that almost made her shoot at me. Then she should have remembered that it was her own fault I irked her by talking about my survival skills – because she totally provoked me into showing myself in the first place.<em>

Damn, now I'm mad all over again…

_"Don't worry, newbie." And suddenly, the hairs on my neck stood on end once more. Did the mind-reader have no sense of restraint? "You'll get to take out your anger on someone for your combat assessment."_

_"Combat what?"_

So I'm gonna have to fight someone after all? Who to pick, who to pick… no contest. I gotta wipe that smug look of self-assumed superiority right out of her red eyes.

* * *

><p>"The one with red eyes," I chose my opponent without any prior knowledge of what she could do. "That's who I'll fight."<p>

The room went dead silent once again. I had assumed that the red-eyed silhouette named Yuuki was their boss or something by how she gave off an air of self-assumed superiority, but I didn't think that she was so much better that I couldn't take her.

"The newbie wants to fight Yuuki!" finally, a cheer erupted from Yuji, breaking the silence. "This, I gotta watch!"

"We should stop calling him 'newbie', don't you think?" the green-eyed Leafa suggested. "What's your name?"

"He doesn't—"

"He doesn't have a name, or at least not one he remembers." And just like that, the mind-reader interrupted Yoruko, and I felt the hairs on my neck stand on end. She really needed to stop doing that uninvited. "But, considering how he takes everything way too seriously, as far back as I can see in his memories… I'm gonna give him the name, 'Kirito'. It means, 'serious', after all."

"Wait, why does she decide my name?" I looked at everyone but the mind-reader incredulously.

"Because she can instantly come up with a name based on your personality or a major part of you," Shino mentioned absentmindedly. "Leafa's name came from Asuna, because her power is tied to plants and nature, both of which she loves."

"Whatever," I relented, knowing I would likely regret letting this go so easily later. "So, Yuuki. Will you fight me?"

"Sure, why not?" she spoke as if it weren't something she particularly cared to do, but would do anyway for my sake. Man, she annoyed me. "I'll pound you into the ground."

"We'll see about that."

* * *

><p>Apparently, the 'moving fortress' that I had been loaded onto was about the size of the mansion I had temporarily resided in three months prior. That is to say, the place was huge. Everybody walked through winding hallway after winding hallway, moving about seemingly aimlessly and occasionally turning back to make sure I was still following.<p>

In the end, the name 'Kirito' stuck more than I'd have liked it to, and everybody there started calling me that. I didn't mind too much, although I didn't particularly like it, either. It just seemed foreign to me, yet also somehow… familiar. Almost as if I had seen it before.

Anyway, when we finally reached another room, it turned out to be huge and open. The perfect place for an all-out battle, or so I assumed they all thought. But for me, the perfect place for battle was a room filled with objects to phase through with Phantom Shift, then use against my opponent as obstacles.

Although, I really only fought things much slower than me on a daily basis. On occasion, some of the undead would be slightly less deteriorated, and thus would move faster, but I had never really fought other humans before today that I could remember. I was already way out of my element.

The conditions were far from equal, right from the start. The person I had challenged was undoubtedly used to fighting people with faster speed than undead, judging by her extremely confident aura. She probably had a lot of experience with it, too, not just bare basic knowledge. And, not to mention…

_They all have a power like mine, right? I wonder what Yuuki's power is… after all, she seems to lord a lot of superiority over everybody else. What got her so cocky?_

Only the red-eyed Yuuki and I had continued walking past the walls of this large, open room. We stopped in the middle, and she began to speak, her tone completely different from before. It held a grave severity to it that I had never heard in anyone.

"All right, here's the rules," she said, eyes piercing straight into my – wait, did she just say _rules_?  
>"No weapons. No cheap shots. You can try to use your power if you want, but it won't get you very far."<p>

I smirked. This girl obviously didn't realize how easily I could abuse my Phantom Shift's lightning-quick activation and deactivation time to essentially evade all damage, yet inflict insane amounts on my opponent. The 'no weapons' bit was a bit of a disappointment, but I suppose I didn't want to kill her, so it made sense.

I didn't notice how the 'no weapons' rule shifted the conditions even further out of my favor.

"Fine, let's go."

I entered a hand-to-hand combat stance that I had developed for when I had lost my weapons, or they weren't within reach. My right foot went out in front slightly, my left in back slightly, and my clenched fists went up in front of my face, left slightly higher than right.

She didn't even enter a fighting stance before beginning her first strike. Her left hand jutted out towards my arm at a high speed, and I reacted just in time for a solid block with my forearm. However, the next strike caught me entirely off-guard: a punch from her right hand, right past my arm and towards my solar plexus.

I knew I wouldn't be able to react in time to block or evade, so I activated my Phantom Shift without a second thought. But for some reason, I didn't feel the change in the pressure on my body, as I usually did.

A sharp pain shot through my solar plexus like white-hot fire as her fist made contact with the group of nerves. Somehow, she had hit me, even though I had activated Phantom Shift to make her punch phase right through.

_What the hell is going on?!_

I lost some balance and most of my breath in this one, quick strike, moving my right foot back to catch myself as I sharply inhaled. I didn't have any time to regain my footing, however, as a leg struck the side of my thigh right as most of my weight fell onto it. My body fell to the ground like a sack of bricks.

"See? Didn't I say I would pound you into the ground?" she asked me in a condescending tone.

I got up shakily, not willing to bow down just yet. "My power… it didn't work. What did you do to me, Yuuki?"

"I disabled its activation when we got to the center of the room, of course," she informed me like it was nothing. "That's my power – to control the powers of others."

"Power Manipulation?" I finally realized just how screwed I was. How screwed I had been from the moment I challenged Yuuki for my combat evaluation. "How sly."

"I like to call it resourceful, thanks."

"Like I care!" I retorted, closing in fast. My only real shot at winning now was to go on the offensive and hopefully catch her off guard. I'd have to end it in one shot.

So I went for the neck. Unfortunately, she blocked my chop by grabbing my wrist. She squeezed, and the pain came back again, though not as intense as when she hit my solar plexus.

"I'm disappointed, Kirito," she whispered right before hitting me square in the stomach with her spare fist. I dropped to the ground, clutching my gut in agony.

As she began to walk away, I wheezed something out. I had to let her know that she hadn't won outright. "If the conditions were equal… I would've won!"

"In your dreams."

With that, my combat evaluation ended in my loss as she left me panting on the floor.

* * *

><p>"If the conditions were equal, you would have won, huh?" a smooth, airy voice commented on my words thirty minutes earlier as its owner sat down across from me. We were at the eating area for breakfast, all eating French toast cooked by Asuna and Leafa, and fruits of some variety that I didn't recognize.<p>

I looked up from my meal to see the chestnut-eyed silhouette of a girl. Asuna the mind reader. She had apparently moved from her spot with the others to sit with me.

"Yeah. What of it?" I curtly replied. If the conditions had been equally familiar or unfamiliar to both of us, I was confident I would have come out on top in our fight.

"You know, a truly talented battle strategist can set the conditions in their favor, not just equally. And they can do it before the battle even begins."

I looked her dead in the eye, telling her with my gaze to just get on with the point. "What are you trying to say?" I furthered my message with my words.

I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end for the umpteenth time. "Your power, Phantom Shift. It has limitations."

"Where are you going with this—"

"But so does Yuuki's Power Manipulation." This came as a shock to me. But why was the mind-reader telling me in the first place? Why would she give away her comrade's secrets so easily? "Aside from having to set the range prior to activation, she can only use it on somebody if she's activated and used her power more times than they have."

I thought about this for a second. If what Asuna said was true, then this was a very limiting condition. It also brought about a very easy method to counter… assuming I could focus solely on that one thing for a whole day or more.

"You've already used your power almost as many times as Yuuki has hers, so I assume that it was hard for her to disable yours," Asuna continued, an interested look in her eyes. "I assume you know what you need to do in order to set the conditions in your favor for next time."

"Yeah… I've got some cramming to do."

The next day, I woke up just a bit earlier. I didn't freak out when Shino made it to my room again and gave me the five-minute warning; I had already gotten ready to go earlier, so I left as soon as her footsteps stopped being audible from the distance.

This time, I made it to their living area in a solid one minute, having found the optimal route between there and my room the day before. I sat down on the couch in the empty spot next to Yuji, quietly greeting him as I waited for the rest of them to arrive.

"So, Kirito," the blue-eyed boy started as another silhouette with almost-closed eyes filed into the living room. "Why did you pick Yuuki to fight against? You're a smart guy, I can tell… so why did you pick our boss, the strongest one?"

"I underestimated her and mistook her confidence of experience for the cockiness of a superior position," I simply replied. Another silhouette entered the room, this time the green-eyed Leafa.

"Morning Kirito-kun, Yuji," she greeted us. As she sat down on the large couch, another walked in – this time it was the chestnut-eyed Asuna, who merely gave me a wave and wink before going over to one of the chairs.

Now there were six of us here, I noted after a quick headcount. The one with almost-closed eyes seemed to be Yoruko, and the only one I couldn't find by the color of their eyes now was Yuuki. Which meant I had to wait a bit longer.

Fortunately, a mere minute later, the red-eyed subject of my thoughts arrived from another door. She yawned slightly, then explained her reasoning. "Sorry I'm late, guys. The doctor wanted to do a few tests again. Said I should be close to an 'evolution' or something."

As she sat down in the chair behind the sofa, I stood up and turned around to face her. I decided to keep the message short and to the point. "Fight me again, Yuuki."

"Excuse you?" came her rather bewildered response, accompanied by the subtle widening of her eyes. "I'm pretty sure I already showed you your level yesterday, bud."

"But that's just it," I prepared to counter, my own eyes narrowing. "All you showed me was how any fight would end if the conditions were all against me. Now I want to teach you something in return. I want to teach you what it feels like to lose."

"Bold words coming from the guy who lost to me a day ago," Yuuki pressed just the right button – or so she thought, but I stayed calm, cool and collected. I could tell from her eyes that it unnerved her. "Fine, then. You can teach me by losing yourself and telling me what it feels like."

"I don't think so, red eyes."

* * *

><p>Once again, the two of us stood at the center of the large, open room. The others all watched from the stands in shocked silence as a rematch unfolded in front of their eyes.<p>

This time, I swayed one condition in my favor. It took all of the day before, but one very large condition had been shifted into my favor. This time, I was certain that my Phantom Shift would work against Yuuki.

"The rules are the same as last time, and I'm sure you remember them," the red-eyed, feminine silhouette known as Yuuki told me. "With the obvious exception of your power, which I'll shortly disable."

I smirked. "Go ahead and try," I retorted as I stared her dead in the eye.

And she did, without even giving any warning signs. Quick and unexpected, she sent a punch straight for my solar plexus again.

But my mind was faster than her body. And so was my Phantom Shift.

I activated it ten centimeters before contact. I felt the familiar change in pressure all around me as the air itself began to phase through my body as if I didn't exist. As if I were merely a mirage, or a visible phantasm remaining in the world after its end.

Her punch, too, went right through me. I could see the look of surprise on her face, but I didn't give her the time to regain balance – she had poured a lot of power and speed into her first strike, so when it missed, it completely threw off her center of gravity.

I walked through her, then deactivated my phantom shift right as I turned around and aimed a punch for the base of her neck. With a satisfying _wham_, I made contact, and Yuuki fell to the ground momentarily, losing control of her muscles for a while due to the strong blow to her spine.

"What the hell…?" the question was strangled and raspy, as if it took all she had just to say it.

I smirked even wider. This is what I had spent an entire day preparing for. With the information that Yuuki's power didn't work on powers used more times than hers, I holed myself up in my room, activating, using and deactivating my power over and over again. I must have done it three hundred times before lunch, and over a thousand by the end of the night.

This was it – the fruition of my 'cramming', as I had called it. Now Yuuki couldn't disable my power anymore. She couldn't do a damn thing about it. In one fell swoop, I set the condition of power use entirely in my favor.

"Want to go again?" I asked the crouching silhouette before me.

She didn't respond with words. Instead, a leg shot out and tried to bring me down to the ground with her. But I activated my Phantom Shift with time to spare, and her leg passed right through mine.

She used the extra momentum of the miss to get herself standing again, and I deactivated my power to take a breath. One of the Phantom Shift's limiting conditions was that it made me unable to interact with anything not within three centimeters of me prior to activation, including air. Therefore, it had to be off for me to breathe more than a single extra breath.

She aimed a punch straight for my head, and with a quick activation of my power, it went right through. I walked through her again, then deactivated Phantom Shift and landed a hit right in her solar plexus – she had apparently tried to turn around and attack me again while I was 'behind' her.

She fell to the floor, coughing violently from the force of my blow. "Hurts, doesn't it?" I queried rhetorically, remembering how she had hit me there the day before. It had hurt like hell. The return for the day before was totally, deliciously satisfying to my battle-primed self.

"Shut up…!"

Thus came another attempt at the first strike from below. This time, she tried to punch me right in my left kneecap. A fast activation of Phantom Shift fixed that right up, though. It went right through me, then I moved my left leg up and over it before deactivating my power, stomping on her arm to hold it down, and taking another breath.

I heard her grunt in pain, but I paid it no mind. "Do you give up?" I went straight for the kill with my words. "Because I can only fight harder. This is just the beginning, trust me on that."

"I…" quiet as a whisper, I heard her solitary word. A pause, and then she began to speak again, increasing her volume to an audible level of choke. "I give up… you win."

I released my foot from her arm the moment she uttered those words loud enough for everyone to hear. I began walking towards the awed crowd of silhouettes, an expression of tired satisfaction settling onto my face. It took an entire day to prepare for this fight, and I had just won it.

"The newbie just beat boss Yuuki…" Yuji mumbled, blue eyes wide with vivid wonder.

"That's the first time I've ever seen Yuuki lose a fight…" came a judgment from Yoruko. Her indigo eyes shined with uncertainty, as if questioning what she just saw. "I'm not dreaming, am I?"

"No, this is real, Yoru," the cerulean-eyed Shino calmly assessed. Her eyes showed no hint of emotion. Hell, she seemed to have it out for me, so she probably just didn't want to acknowledge my skill, even after this display.

The only one among them who stayed silent was the very person who told me what to do to win in the first place. The mind-reader, the chestnut-eyed Asuna.

"Yeah, I won against Yuuki," I acknowledged what must have been hard for everyone else to swallow. "I won because I had the right guidance. There's no way I could have thought of the way to win on my own, without the information that one of you gave me."

This was a first. I had never admitted to my own weakness or lack of ability in any area before, even to myself. But it didn't feel so bad to admit my reliance on another, especially after I saw the grateful look in the chestnut eyes of the one the words were intended for.

"_It was no trouble. After all, because of your determination, I got to see something more interesting than usual."_

The collection of words blared at the forefront of my consciousness for their duration, reading themselves off in my mind in Asuna's rather light voice. Had that girl… just sent her thoughts into my head…? Was that even possible for a mind-reader? Although… she never said that reading minds was her _only_ power… I just assumed so.

"_Don't think too much about it, you'll never figure it out on your own."_

I felt kind of angry as the hairs of my neck stood on end while I received that one. Well, at least it ruled out mind control. She just sent a command thought directly into my head, and it only made me want to do the exact opposite of what she said. So, there went one scary possibility.

"Kirito," the mind-reader spoke aloud this time. "I just received a thought from the doctor. He says he wants to examine you."

_Wait, what?_

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><p><strong>AN:**

**What do you think? I like this chapter, but I personally would have preferred to make the second fight last longer. Maybe have Yuuki try for a little more before giving up? But then I realized that the way I wrote her character in this story would make it highly improbable for her to keep going when she knows she's beat. So I had her give up a bit earlier than I wanted, and decided to develop the start of one of the pairing routes: the Asuna route.**

**This is a harem fic, after all, so I can't forget to add a bit of relationship development here and there. I still plan to focus more on character development and motivation exploration than token fluff and pairing moments, but I mustn't forget why a good portion of my readers picked this up.**

**So yeah, route one of six, maybe seven possible routes is in progress (no KiriYuji yaoi, sorry, but there will be more character appearances before long). Which route Kirito ends up going for at the end will likely be based on my whimsical nature as a writer with no sense of allegiance to any pairing. If you'd prefer one end pair over another, you can certainly tell me so in a review, and I'll take the overall vote count into consideration when making my choice. But right now, that's a long way off, so I wouldn't bother just yet.**

**Well, I should get going for now. Got to work on a few other works before calling it a day. See you all next chapter!**


	5. Chapter 5: Checkup, Ultimate Wager

Last Stand

Chapter Five: Checkup; Ultimate Wager

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><p><strong>AN:**

**I cut this off a bit early because I found a good stopping point. Most of it was written post twelve AM, but the only real problem is that I got kind of caught up in the dialogue and didn't balance it out with description as much as I should have. I tried going back and adding some, but all that ended up doing was making some minor adjustments and fixing the one grammar mistake I found.**

**Oh, while I remember! In response to the challenge/comparison issued to me at the bottom note of a fic I recently read called "Sword Art Online: Hard Mode", which apparently takes from my stuff for reference material… you're right, I probably won't ever continue my own gender-bent Kirito fic, "ALfheim Online: Hard Mode". The setup I gave it is one I couldn't keep up the quality of if I continued it. It was a gem of mine, despite being unfamiliar territory, and I feel I'd ruin its polish if I tried to make more chapters for it.**

**One more thing: my profile has been wiped! I completely scrapped the old version that'd been there a year, and updated it with a list of stories I plan to work on in the foreseeable future. Be sure to check it out if you're interested in knowing what I'll bother continuing, but be warned that the list is probably agonizingly short, and is missing a good portion of my most famous stuff. There's also a story or two that I haven't published yet mentioned there, to give a heads up on what's coming in the future.**

**I don't have much else to say, except for that this chapter is mostly exposition. No fights, those'll happen next chapter. I'll let you read to find out more about what exposition I'm talking about.**

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><p>"It was no trouble. After all, because of your determination, I got to see something more interesting than usual."<p>

_The collection of words blared at the forefront of my consciousness for their duration, reading themselves off in my mind in Asuna's rather light voice. Had that girl… just sent her thoughts into my head…? Was that even possible for a mind-reader?_ _Although… she never said that reading minds was her _only_ power… I just assumed so._

"Don't think too much about it, you'll never figure it out on your own."

_I felt kind of angry as the hairs of my neck stood on end while I received that one. Well, at least it ruled out mind control. She just sent a command thought directly into my head, and it only made me want to do the exact opposite of what she said. So, there went one scary possibility._

_"Kirito," the mind-reader spoke aloud this time. "I just received a thought from the doctor. He says he wants to examine you."_

Wait, what?

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><p>After being sent through a series of hallways I had yet to memorize, I found myself in a room not unlike a doctor's examination office with another silhouette. He had brown eyes, almost black, which was a first for my sight in a while… everybody else I'd met in the past few days, or really the past five years, had a weird eye color. Either some vibrant color, or a shimmering gold that signified the undead.<p>

"I'll take my leave now, doctor," the chestnut-eyed mind-reader spoke to this new figure who loomed taller than both of us before slowly backing out of the room and shutting the door behind her.

It struck me that this person I now stood alone in a small room with was probably the first adult human I had met since my memories began dwindling along with my sanity. He was tall, but lanky, as if he got almost no exorcise to build up the muscles vital to survival outside this moving fortress. His silhouette seemed as thin as a tree branch, making me wonder if he got enough to eat.

"Good day, Kirito-kun," he spoke in the most formal Japanese I had heard of anyone here, despite the fact that we weren't in Japan, from what I could tell. He gave off the air of a scientist, rather than a doctor, but I didn't say so aloud. "I watched your second battle with Yuuki from the cameras that surveyed that room. Your power, do you have a name for it?"

This was the first time somebody had asked me for my power's name. Although, I'd only been in contact with humans for a few days over five years, and the ones curious about my power either read my mind to find out, or they already knew about its name because the mind-reader said it right away.

"Phantom Shift," I spoke its name aloud for the first time since I thought of it. "That's what I call it. It allows me to move through things that aren't longer or wider than I am tall when I do this."

With my words, I stood on the tips of my toes, then stretched my arms as far up as I could. The result was an extension of my total height, from the tips of my toes to my fingertips, by about two and a half feet, putting me at well over seven feet. Of course, my normal height was still just over five feet, since you don't count things like that. But my power did, which I found out after numerous tests.

"It also only allows me to move through things parallel to my body," I continued as I stopped stretching, putting my arms back down to my sides and letting the rest of my feet to have contact with the linoleum flooring again. "So I can't fall through the floor of a building unless I'm laying down on it."

"I see," he seemed to be writing on something, probably a clipboard by the looks of it. "Any other details you can think of?"

"It has a period right after use where I can't use it again unless I deactivate it and reactivate it," I recalled this rather odd limitation after putting a hand to my chin. "But it's really weird, because the period lasts about three seconds, but I can just deactivate and reactivate it in less than a second to get around the time limit."

"Can you breathe when the power activates?" he asked me about my power's greatest limit without restraint, still writing down on his clipboard.

"No, I can't," I answered honestly, an expression of grave severity on my face. "When my power activates, my body becomes unable to be interacted with by anything, including air, so I can only breathe in the air that was within three centimeters of my body when I started using it, because that's the limit of how far away something can be before I can't interact with it."

"So your power only affects your own body and the things incredibly near it, then?"

His words took me by surprise. I know he said he wanted to examine me, but I figured that'd be like the physical examinations I read about in books, not just him asking me about my power's specs over and over. And to top it off, his most recent question made me look at things in a completely different way from before.

"Y-yeah…" I eventually coaxed out, gaze cast down at the tile flooring.

"I see," he replied rather quickly. "Just like Yuuki, your power is different from the rest."

"Come again?" I didn't mind being put in the same class as Yuuki – after all, she proved to be a better fist-fighter without powers involved – but I still found it a bit strange. "Why would you say that?"

He launched into an explanation before I could stop him. "Most of the powers I've encountered after the Event have one thing in common: they affect both the user and one or more major things in the user's environment. In other words, in order to be activated and used, both control over one's self, and certain environmental conditions have to be met. Like with Leafa's Nature Manipulation, where she needs to be in the presence of nature-related things to use it.

"I've seen hundreds of powers in my time, each of them unique, and the only two that broke this rule were your Phantom Shift and Yuuki's Power Manipulation," he informed me of the apparent rarity of my ability. "However, you're both at the opposite extremes of the spectrum. Yuuki's Power Manipulation only affects others, and doesn't affect her own self at all, in any way. But your Phantom Shift is completely self-focused; it only affects you and your person, and doesn't affect anything or anyone in your environment."

Despite the latter half of his statement probably having some value, I couldn't help but get caught up in the first bit. He said he'd seen hundreds…? But there were only seven or eight people here, including myself, that I'd seen so far.

"With her power being focused solely on others, and your power being focused solely on yourself, it makes sense that you were able to win after training your power a bit. Your victory was only natural—"

"Excuse me," I cut him off with no warning. I needed to know… I needed to know what he meant by that offhanded comment. "But I need you to tell me something. Just how many powers have you seen? I've only seen less than ten kids here with powers, but you say you've seen hundreds. Don't tell me they all…!"

I couldn't finish my sentence without my head clouding up in anger. Had this person… had he really let so many people…?! Wasn't he a doctor?! Why didn't he help them?!

He responded to my wavering voice and shocked thoughts with one of a practiced dullness, as if he killed his emotions all at once for it. He put a hand to his face, and it occurred to me by the slight glare from the overhead lights that now covered his black eyes that he must have worn glasses.

"They died in the field, naturally."

I suddenly remembered how Yuji supposedly had broken bones. So then… he got them from going outside? Then he must have been so incredibly close to dying, or worse, becoming one of the undead… I shivered at the thought of the laid-back, playful blue-eyed boy becoming the very thing I killed with zero hesitation. Would I even be able to kill him if he became one, after knowing his human self?

But the supposed 'doctor' of this place didn't stop for my thought process. "Of all the powers that awakened in less than one percent of the world's previous population after the Event, a large quantity of them aren't useful in combat situations. Surely you must have noticed this already. Eugeo, or 'Yuji' as the children call him, has a power that is completely useless for survival against undead. He can change the way people see the general area around him, but the undead rely on smell to locate their prey, not sight. The reason he has several broken bones right now is because a relatively intelligent undead holding a blunt weapon, an aluminum baseball bat, attacked him relentlessly in the middle of a mission and severely injured him. He had to be brought back in someone else's arms because he couldn't even walk.

"And Yoruko's skill level in combat is decisively zero," the emotionless man continued his speech, making me grit my teeth in rage. "The only reason she participates in missions is to scout out other power users with her own power, Power Sensing. She can also use it to sense where the undead are, and therefore lead the group away from potential conflict. Unfortunately, when she uses her power, anything she senses will get the feeling they're being watched for as long as she senses them, which can lead them straight to the group, so she must choose when to use her power carefully."

I remembered my first meeting with Yoruko, how she'd been in the middle of the street, chased after by over ten undead. I also remembered how Shino had valued her above other humans when they reunited, saying she was 'much more important to their team than any rat she found'. So she had been referring to how Yoruko's Power Sensing, a strategic advantage, was more useful than the power of anyone she found with it…

But no, that seemed too heartless for normal human thought, even for Shino. Something else I theorized, based on all this new information, would make things far clearer. What if Shino was a veteran here along with the indigo-eyed one, and had seen a lot of people with non-combat powers die in missions because Yoruko found them and took them in? She might have had to harden her heart to deal with all the human death before her, and the current girl would be the predictable result of that kind of trauma. And the reason she was so hard on me, when everybody else had already sort of accepted me, would be because she didn't want to become attached to someone who would probably die soon anyway.

As I made one connection after another, this man just kept on talking, saying more and more that angered me for reasons I couldn't understand. "Asuna's Mind Reading, while highly useful for detecting the potentially-unstable mental states of her peers, is also useless in the current world outside this fortress. The undead don't think the same way as humans; their thoughts are much more basic, as if their brains hardly function at all. She can only read their intentions, not anything as sophisticated or useful as from what direction they will strike her. She doesn't participate in missions because she can't fight something she can barely read.

"Right now, the only ones with powers useful in combat are you, Yuuki and—"

"That's enough of your heartless words!" I nearly shouted at the brown-eyed silhouette of a doctor before me. "You… you just love hearing yourself talk, don't you? You probably tell yourself it's inevitable that so many kids die in front of you in order to sleep at night!"

I knew I probably shouldn't be saying these things to the man who would be treating my wounds if I got injured, but I couldn't stop. Rage boiled from an unknown origin within me at the mere notion that he even implied that the deaths of Yuji, Asuna and Yoruko were inevitable. I couldn't help it. I had just started to grow attached to them, to think that they would become constants in my life, and he just went and implied they'd be the ones to die. I wanted to punch him in the face and tell him he had lost his humanity for thinking in such a passive way about death.

Instead, I grit my teeth and coiled my hands into tight fists at my sides, breathing deeply for a moment. When I regained my composure a bit several seconds later, I spoke in a slightly calmer tone, but it only rose in intensity.

"Well guess what, old man? I won't let these people die. No matter how tough it is, no matter what gets in my way, I'll make sure each one of them survives for a long time to come!"

There. I said it. I said something I wouldn't have even considered saying mere days ago. But the words felt so natural coming from my lips, like I would have said them even if I didn't like these humans around me.

"Are you willing to bet on it?" This proposal coming from the brown-eyed, bespectacled man caught me off guard. "I may not look it, but I'm a betting man. I'd like to bet on it, if you're up for it."

"… Fine, I'll make a bet," I answered after a moment's pause. After all, there was no way I'd lose.

"What will you bet on the survival of your comrades?" this question came as little surprise to me; in fact, I had already thought of a suitable 'chip' for it.

"My life," I answered without missing a beat. I looked this man dead in his startled brown eyes before continuing in what I hoped was a confident tone. "Because I'd sooner die than let one of my comrades die before me."

He paused for a moment, and I could see his brown eyes calculating a response. Then, at long last, he spoke again, this time in a tone filled with lofty aspirations. His right arm pointed to the ground as he formed his bold statement, and his left pointed to me.

"Then I bet the world itself… because if our mission succeeds, then you and your friends will have a world free of the undead to live in peacefully for the rest of your time on it."

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><p><strong>AN:**

**I totally need to write some token description for everything I see around me. That'd get me into the habit of describing things in my stories better… probably. It's like, what the hell does the room look like? All I said was 'doctor's examination office', then I just dropped it? What the hell, me? I'm better than that… I'm just writing when I'm sleep-deprived, I guess.**

**So yeah, this chapter came from nowhere. I totally wrote about fifteen-hundred words of it in the past two hours, and it's past two AM. The rest of it was written earlier yesterday, almost twelve hours ago.**

**By the way, anybody notice that Kirito just made a wager he's probably gonna regret? Not just because of the consequences, but also because a certain mind and memory reader would find this particularly interesting… and she's kind of a blabbermouth about what she finds inside people's heads.**

**Anyway, I know it's not my best stuff, but I'd love feedback regardless! If you want to blast it to hell for its poor description, go ahead. If you want to praise it for god knows what reason, that's cool, too! I'll try to respond to intelligent reviews within a day or two, but I might get sidetracked… hmm… well, I'll try to respond, at least.**

**Well, I've gotta go for now. Need sleep and all that jazz. See you when I see you!**


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